Saturday, October 25, 2008

Heckling McCain

One of the lone benefits of living in the state of melancholia known as the Land of Enchantment is that every four years it gains a small, brief flash of prominence. It is, thanks to the absurdities of our electoral system, one of a handful of “battleground” states that are considered up for grabs. While that liberal bastion of depravity called California is the juiciest prize with fifty five electoral votes, its outcome is reliably anti-American. Similarly with Texas, the land of inflated egos, its thirty four votes ought to be much more enticing than the paltry five of neighboring New Mexico, but it’s bound to go for whoever the Republican is. Unless the Republican is Alan Keyes, then it’s a toss-up. But since New Mexico can teeter-totter either way, and has done that quite a bit, its five votes can go either way, it’s a slightly bi-curious state. That means that we’ve been blessed with campaign stops by all of the major candidates, and their surrogates, and we’ve been subjected to an unrelenting stream of torturous campaign ads, and robocalls.
Due to my fortuitous residence, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to see men from both tickets up close, and managed to miss the single woman from the main candidates by a matter of mere hours and ninety or so miles. Both men appeared weeks apart in the exact same venue.
I showed up to see Joe Biden on a Friday. Tickets were required, I showed up a little before the announced time for distributing the tickets the day before. There was already a line of a dozen or so people who had showed up even earlier than I had. The group was diverse, an assortment of the elderly, college age young adults, middle aged fogies, with several different ethnicities.
The rally was in the Mesilla Plaza, gates opened at eleven thirty, which is right when I arrived. Joe was scheduled to show up at one thirty. My associate commonly known as Waffle Bob, and my very lovely Mexican friend decided to humor me and come along. I was gladdened to see that security had improved markedly in the four years since I’d last seen a vice-presidential candidate in the same spot. When John Edwards showed up to speak in his failed attempt to unseat Dick Cheney, the security was abysmally poor. There wasn’t a metal detector in sight, and the short staffed managers of the event picked a few large looking high school students out of the attendees to do crowd control. The school to which I went, an alternative school peopled mainly by gangsters and delinquents, was just across the street, and students were allowed to attend as a lesson in civic responsibility. So when they needed bouncers to stand at a gate, and only allow people with the right ticket to pass, they picked out some the more imposing students to do that job. I happened to know the ones they picked, and luckily they took that responsibility seriously.
The Biden rally and speech was mostly unremarkable. Our own Governator Billy Richardson dropped in, his beard in tow, Senator Jeff Bingaman also put in some face time, and Mr. Udall, the democratic candidate for senate, was unable to attend, but his lovely wife Jill attended in his stead. The most lasting thing I took away from that event was a nasty sunburn. I do love Biden though, and think he’s a great guy, always one that’s good for a laugh.
I really wanted to go see Sarah Palin. She was going to be in Roswell the Sunday after the Friday that I saw Joe, and that weekend I was with my mom, sort of in the area, about an hour and a half drive’s a way. Alas, I was unable to convince her to put in the gas and the time to make it to it. That one might’ve been fun.
McCain’s the big guy; he’s at the top, not a mere number two. When I heard that he was coming to town, my first thought was I need to get tickets to go to this thing, and my second thought was, I should make a big “VOTE MULATTO! 08” sign to smuggle into the rally. Unfortunately people weren’t very accommodating, so I didn’t manage to make that sign. I did get tickets. They were being handed out at the McCain campaign’s Victory office. Showing up there, I made a point to not park too close to their office, lest they see my Obama bumper sticker and realize that I’m an impostor. Every time that I’ve been to an Obama office, the people there, workers, volunteers, tourists, whatever, were very diverse, they were from every age group and every ethnicity. Walking into that McCain office, I was greeted with a uniform collection of white, wrinkled faces. Everybody else there must’ve had at least thirty two years on me. Every single person other than myself was old and white, which I guess should be expected, the supporters mirror their candidates.
The rally opened at two, which is right around the time I got there. I had to be a little early to pay parking scalpers two bucks to park in a dirt field. Amid dozens of trucks and SUV’s adorned with McCain-Palin stickers and various other obscenities, mine was the lone car sporting a sticker saying “Obama 08- Si se puede!”
I didn’t have backup this time, the one time that I probably needed it most. I got there early enough to get an advantageous spot to stand, probably about forty feet away from the microphone, almost as close as I had been when Biden was there. A crane had raised a giant American flag, at just the right angle, so that minutes into it, the sun snuck behind it, eclipsed by the flag as America’s eclipsed the hope of the world. That was roughly what I said in a photo-text-message that I sent from the rally. I think I got a pretty good shot of it dipping behind the flag. That flag was the best, if only for the shade that it gave me. I may have escaped with only a minor sunburn this time.
People started filling in around me, and I let a few people g closer, because I assumed that they legitimately wanted to see the guy. Workers began assembling the podium, and the crowd roared as the “Straight Talk Express” drove past. The McCain campaign is in such dire financial shape that they were handing out hand painted signs, at least that’s the spin I’m putting on it. There were a handful of professionally printed signs, but most were of the elementary school chic type. They may have been going for a folksy feel.
I saw one black guy there, he was wearing a McCain shirt, I tried getting a photo of him, to have the caption, “The uncoolest black dude ever.”
I was standing alone, in a sea of enemies, wondering if they knew that I was not one of them. It was definitely whiter than Biden’s crowd, and older, but there was some variety, and a few young people, parents had brought their young children, presumably to warn them about what types of men may make it in politics. A republican candidate for the New Mexico state legislature gave the opening, prayerful invocation, a whole bunch of religious mumbo jumbo; for the most part I stayed respectfully silent, shouting at the tail end of it something along the lines of “Atheists for Obama!”
Vikki Carr was there, I don’t really know who she is, apparently some Grammy winning singer from El Paso who supports McCain, she didn’t say anything that I felt required a response, she did bring up Vietnam, going to visit the boys. She sang some songs, America the Beautiful, and went into a thing where she was singing “let it be him,” god willing, let it be John McCain.
Tinsley showed up to speak. I don’t like him very much. He is the republican running for congress, and he was quite an annoying windbag. He got to a point where he all but accused his opponent of being a child pornographer, a statement I felt did warrant a response, so I so eloquently shouted back “BULLSHIT!” And a few people turned around to stare at me for a second or two.
Next up to the plate was Steve Pearce, a truly vile republican, gap toothed scumbag who snubbed my sister’s college wine class. He is the current congressman, and he’s running for a seat in the senate that’s being vacated by Pete Domenici. I don’t have any unkind words for Domenici, who was also there, but I don’t really know if he deserves any or not. But Pearce, when he started talking about Joe the Plumber, whose name is not Joe, and who’s not really a plumber, and who can’t afford the business that was the point of him talking to Obama, I couldn’t stand it. Enough with Joe the Plumber! I’m tired of even hearing his name (I must admit, in the interest of fairness, that Lindsey Graham talking about Joe “the Biden”, I let out a little laugh). Pearce said that we needed to elect McCain, so that Joe the plumber would be able to afford his business, and create new jobs, while Obama just wanted to spread the wealth around. Since Joe the not actually “Joe” and not actually a “plumber” actually makes forty grand a year, I yelled at Pearce “Under Obama’s plan, Joe the Plumber would get a tax cut!”
Steve went on to say that McCain needs to be president, so that we’ll get good republican economic policies, tax cuts to create jobs and grow the economy. Naturally, a shout of “It’s worked great the past eight years!” was in order. And all of my heckles were timed, almost perfectly, because I cannot hope to claim perfection, so that they were said in that little window of opportunity after the speaker has finished his sentence, and after the crowd has died down, right in that moment of silence as the speaker draws his next breath, so that they would have maximum impact.
By the time the elderly war hero finally came around, I had picked what I wanted to say, and was waiting for a good silent moment to shout it in. So after he talked about how we’re winning the war in Iraq, “Surge, baby, Surge!” I found an opportune time to ask, “How many more soldiers are you going to send to die, is forty two hundred not enough for ya?!” It was at this one when I most feared for my safety.
A rotund, middle aged white gentleman with thinning hair started pushing against me. His wife said something, and I’m paraphrasing here “you better watch out buddy, he’s a soldier.” Big scary soldier feels like he needs to shove around a thin, gangly white boy, why? I have no idea. I wanted to say to him, “if you’re a soldier, you should be more upset, I’m not happy about dead soldiers, this fucking guy wants to make more of them, why do you have a problem with me? You should care about dead soldiers more than I do.” But not wanting to provoke anyone anymore than necessary, I said that I’d appreciate it if he stopped assaulting me.
By this point I was definitely found out, I was no longer undercover. People knew that I was not one of them. Through the various shouts people were turning around and looking at me, some said “you can leave if you want to.” “Why would I want to leave, I’ve waited an hour and a half out here in the sun for my chance to shout invectives at these politicians. It’s my right to be here.” And I think that most of what I was saying were legitimate things to say, not just taunts and jeers, but things that were for the most part grounded in reality. Which has a well known liberal bias.
I stuck it out there, feeling fairly unwelcome, clapping politely at the applause lines. Some people were shouting Socialist as Obama’s name came up in discussions about economic policies. The one time I pulled my punch was when McCain started talking about how the government needed to buy up all the bad mortgages across the country, because that’s where the problem started. I so dearly wanted to yell “SOCIALIST!” because that’s as socialistic as anything the other guy’s put up, but I was tempered by not wanting to provoke the man who might be a veteran who was still eying me. I stayed till the end, trying to strike up polite banter with the people next to me. As I walked out, I heard someone whisper to somebody else “there’s the demonstrator.”

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

So do you feel proud being a REV. going to a rally to start trouble rather than respecting the rights of those American citizens who are there to support McCain?
I don't know where you have been living the last four decades, I know who Vikki Carr is, and according to her website (www.vikkicarr.net) the Grammy folks do too, soon to be honored with the 2008 Lifetime Achievement. Can we all get along it's American the Beautiful, NOT America the Ugly.

Rev. Ezra Shark said...

Dear Sir Anonymous,
I absolutely feel proud, it was alot of fun going off and doing that. I wasn't trying to start any trouble, most of what I did was based on clearly thought out positions. The one, or maybe two exceptions would be my atheists comment, and using an expletive when Tinsley was speaking. But in my defense, what that guy was saying was obscene, he was equating his opponent with a child pornographer, I don't know if you could hit very much harder below the belt than with that one. And that religious voodoo incantations is just ridiculous, we've come a long way in the past three thousand years, I don't need the stories and superstitions of paleolithic nomads thrust into my face. Compare what I said to what other people were shouting, yelling out that Obama was a socialist and a muslim, not that there's anything wrong with being those things. Using those as invectives isn't based on anything remotely rooted in reality. What the fuck is wrong with yelling some straight talk at the straight talk express? They had it coming. God forbid a little bit of reality sneeks its way into some of those skulls.
Oh, and I haven't been living for the past four decades, I'm still a fifth of a decade away from living for two decades.

Unknown said...

Why a person has to degrade another person is beyond me. Sir, your ignorance is showing...Vikki Carr?
You don't know who she is? Oh please... your ugly is showing.
You see, Vikki Carr Is an American, she lives here and has the same rights everyone else has, as stated in the Bill of Rights. I don't happen to agree with some of her views, however, I agree she has the right to speak, and by the way, she has done more for people of the world than most, so I take exception to your comment.
Sleezyjo

Unknown said...

Dear Ezra,
I'm commenting on the answer you gave anonymous. Didn't you think the people who were yelling obscenities were way off? and then look at you, not only did you slam him, but an innocent woman who was just saying what she's believes. I mean, why go to a rally of people you don't like, what's that all about? Just to stir up trouble? I think this is way too important for silly games, if ya don't want McCain, then don't go to his rallies, it's really simple, instead, talk to YOUR friends about the goodnesses of the person you do like.
Sleezyjo

Anonymous said...

Dear Sir Anonymous and Patty,

I like your style short sweet and not offensive, and to Rev Ezra Shark....you cussed again in your answer back to "Sir Anonymous,"

Hats off to Vicki Carr for standing up for what she believes in. She has my vote! I was present and she stirred emotions with her version of America the Beautiful. We need more Vicki Carrs!

God watch over all of us!

Rev. Ezra Shark said...

Dear Miss Patty,
I didn't at all mean to criticize Vikki Carr, I don't think I said anything that was overly critical or ugly. It wasn't my intention, I was just mentioning her because she was there, and I wanted to include as much info about that event as I could. She absolutely has the right to say whatever she wants, and I completely respect it. I was never telling anyone to shut up. My comments, save for one exception, were based in reality, they were truthful, and honest, and weren't intended to cause trouble, but to serve as a counterpoint. When they say things like Joe the Plumber would be better off under McCain, because Obama would raise his taxes, when in fact Joe the not-really-a-plumber would fall into the ninety five percent of americans who'd get a tax cut, a response is not out of line. These past eight years have been hell for this country and the world, and John McCain will head go right ahead with continuing where George Bush has left off. When the people running the government have displayed such reckless disregard for basic principles of decency, it can create some righteous anger. Waging a war of aggression against a country that never threatened the United States, causing over forty two hundred American soldiers to be killed, tens of thousands more wounded, destroying an entire country, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men women and children, things like that get me pretty angry, and it comes through in what I write. This is 2008 and there are people who are still arguing about the morality of torture for christsake! We've rounded up hundreds of people and shipped them off to the Caribbean with no real oversight, or charges, or legal justification for it at all. They've done the same thing to American citizens. Look at Jose Padilla, the president signs a letter and he gets sent to a naval brig for years, just because Bush signed a letter calling him an enemy combatant. These men stood by and did nothing while an iconic American city was getting destroyed, and left people stranded in a hellish nightmare for days. Hurricane Katrina might have came in under 9/11's death toll by a thousand, but the broad impacts from that were so huge and devastating, it's the worst disaster in this nation's history, yet it hasn't had nearly as much impact on our political culture. I am tired of being governed by men and women who think that we're stupid, that we can be bought off with tax cuts, all while our country continues to circle the drain, I'm tired of trying to be manipulated by fear. Thanks for your comments.

Unknown said...

Oh Ezra,
I applaud you for your passion. It's good to know there are folks who REALLY do care about all this.
I hope you keep going with your beliefs.
My opinion is...Put your passion to better use than to go to a rally where people are as passionate about their beliefs as you are with yours.
Join the Democratic Party and help pass out signs, or offer to assist folks to the polls on election day.
Clearly your heart is in the right place, I just wish we would let FREEDOM RING and leave people with different views alone.
Thank you for explaining your view, and about Vikki Carr. Hope I didn't bite too hard. Don't ever lose your passion.
Sleezyjo

Rev. Ezra Shark said...

Patty, thank you very much for your comments. The both of us, we are either very lucky or very cursed to be living in interesting times. I understand why you might take issue with the actions that I wrote about, but I think that when the stakes start getting higher, sometimes always following a high standard of civility can get in the way. I have been doing things that would be, say, more constructive than what I wrote about. I've been working with a group at my campus to get college students registered to vote, I've done canvassing for Obama's campaign, I've even written letters(actually, a letter) to the editor, which I of course had to tone down slightly. From where I'm standing (not to shamelessly plug another post of mine, but I think there's one title why write, right? that speaks about this a little more), and I know that my perspective might not be the correct one, the entire world is standing on the brink of a precipice right now, and it looks like it's going to be a long hard fall. And this is by no means something that I blame on one segment of the country, or the world, or whatever, in particularly, but is due to the natural culmination of history. The United States is bankrupt, we have absolutely no money at all, we've been able to avoid a complete crash so far solely because the rest of the world hasn't decided to freeze our credit limit. There are two big geological and climatological disasters that are barreling down on us. The production of oil will start to decline very soon, there's only so much left in the ground. In the US the amount of oil that we've been able to recover has declined every year since 1970, which is why people saying "drill, baby, drill!" just don't get it. We can't drill our way out of the problem when the problem is there's not enough crude left in the ground. And that's going to be disastrous, there's nothing to fall back on. All the talk of clean coal, solar, wind, tide, and nuclear energy hides the fact that even when combined, those sources don't have anywhere near the convenience and utility of petroleum. We've seen the last days of cheap oil. Throw that in with global warming, which is only going to get worse as we start burning up more coal to replace the oil we'll be losing, and the century ahead's looking rather bleak. Which is why I care so much about it, and why I'm willing to come off as a little abrasive. These things matter. Who we elect matters a lot, and to see people distracted by the candidate's pastors, or what they're wearing, or a guy calling himself joe the plumber, it can get me worked up. The choices that are going to be made have profound consequences beyond what will be the new colors of the curtains in the White House.

Unknown said...

Oh Ezra Honey,
Your so young, and I feel so old....I was where you are (with all that fire) 30 years ago, when men were fighting one another. Then, our cry was "All we are saying is give peace a chance."
Both our views are correct. People dismissed my protests and chalked them up to my age, and because I was loud AND passionate, the folks just dismissed me as a nut job.
That's when I learned I could make my cause better known by adding sugar so to speak, also by remaining calm.
Your very refreshing Ezra. It's really nice to know the young ones are listening, just don't forget to have a little fun also. listen to some music, broaden your horizons.
Listen to Vikki Carr.
Take care of yourself Ezra.
Sleezyjo

Rev. Ezra Shark said...

Patty,
I think it's very interesting the way the tone of your comments changed as they progressed. It's good to know that not everyone on the intraweb is a hardheaded dogmatist. Thank you.